Heads up skinners:

I have recently gotten into skinning and I am interested...

How do you do your wood?

How do you your metal?

How do you do your grips?

How do you do your lighting/ shading?

Etc..

Please post some techniques, I would love to know how you skin. It will help me learn how to skin. :D

answer to all your problems: tutorial link (http://models.firearmsmod.com/?p=tut&tut=list&cat=3)

Don't like that site.

Then you can always try this site. (www.google.com)

How about we let the skinners post their techniques! How about that? Huh? Huh? Huh? ***!

spyroteknik.com has a damn good wood tut, or at least I think it's spyro...:confused:

Skin or re-skin? To reskin you can use model viewer.

I usually take a photo of the wood i want or use a wood sample, then paste it over the mesh/old skin. To add scratches and dirt etc i used a custom brush set or use the pencil tool to create simple scratches.

the metal i used a tutorial which i think polygon wrote and cant remember how to do it off the back of my hand but is relatively simple:)

For Grips, i havnt done 2 many or any that are large but all u need to do is use the pencil tool and hold down shift to get a sharp straight line. Use Darken and lighten to add depth etc.

For lighting and shading i use burn, dodge, darken and lighten brushes.

I am not the best skinner out there but those are my ways, hope it could help.:)

It always looks better when you make your own wood.

I don't see what's so bad about the firearms tuts. They have good tuts there, I'm gonna check them out.

I've never liked Dillinger's photoskins. They don't go well with the skinned metal. Might as well photoskin the metal too.

I like dillingers photo skins:)

For metal cylinders i suggest: open your document and Filter>Render>Clouds in the area you want to.
Then take the burn tool at 65% exposure range:midtones and totally burn you clouded surface. Then with dodge tool 65% exposure range:midtones lighten a straight line. step 1 (http://membres.lycos.fr/jesuismongol/Tuto-translation/photo%201%20copy.gif)

step 2 (http://membres.lycos.fr/jesuismongol/Tuto-translation/photo%202%20copy.gif)

step 3 (http://membres.lycos.fr/jesuismongol/Tuto-translation/photo%203%20copy.gif)

You can also add some noise to make it different.

Photoskinning metal is VERY hard to do, you have to get the lighting perfect, otherwise you'll have to balance everything out in photoshop, which is tough when you have light lines on your metal, which is why I never photoskin metal.

But as for wood, photoskinning wood I think is the best way to do it. Making wood from scratch doesn't have the same fluidity and texture as real wood.

I don't know about techniques, just do what you think looks best to YOU. Don't worry about if you think people are going to love it or hate it. Skin for yourself first and everyone else second, otherwise you'll have way too much to live up to.